


Dancing in a Green Bay

by hetzi_clutch



Series: Sleep Paralysis [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Basically a conversation, F/F, Gen, not much else to add, spoilers for sleep paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetzi_clutch/pseuds/hetzi_clutch
Summary: Yaz has a conversation in her mind. A companion piece to Sleep Paralysis.





	Dancing in a Green Bay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [13stardisfam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13stardisfam/gifts).



> Hey, I wrote this on a whim and am now posting it on a whim. This is set somewhere in the last chapter of Sleep Paralysis, so I highly recommend you don't read this if you haven't read Sleep Paralysis. If you have, then by all means

The asteroid is silent as the space around it. The sky glimmers silver and blue and black, a tapestry of stars and swirling nebulas scattered over thickly-blanketed darkness. On the asteroid, carpeted with lush greenery, sits a bench.

On the bench, there are two people.

They sit silently for long minutes. Yaz is watching her feet, back and forth, back and forth, and Yaz, the proper Yaz, is watching her.

“It’s a bit weird, seeing you. Seeing me.” Yaz glances at her own feet, still, dangling several inches off the ground. She frowns. “You can’t change your face?”

“Why would I?” the Nightmare Child turns her head, and her eyes are all black, glittering like inverse stars. She grins, and it’s sparkling too. “I like being you.”

Yaz’s eyes run uneasily over her face, drop to her identical shirt, then refocus on her smile. It’s not a nice smile, but it’s not exactly _bad._ It looks, in many ways, entirely innocent.

“You’re gonna eat me, aren’t you?” she looks to her hands, wrapped around the edge of the seat, then lifts them up, starts to examine. The tips of her fingers are blackened, faded and charred. She curls them experimentally, and suppresses a shudder. “I mean, you have been, aren’t you? I can feel it, now that I’m seein’ everything.”

When she looks up, the Nightmare Child is still grinning, excited as a child at a zoo. 

“‘Course I am,” she says. “You’ve got so _much_ in you, you know? All those things you would have seen, I can—” she sucks in a breath, lets it out in an eager huff. Her voice, on the next words, drops to a whisper. “I’m so _hungry.”_

“What about all those in there?” Yaz cocks her head, quizzical. Quizzical, and slightly disapproving. “Not that I’m eager to see them dead, but you’ve got a whole war, don’t you? Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Yeah, _right.”_ the Nightmare Child snorts. “You think I haven’t consumed every single one of them, a dozen times? I’m a creature of pure time, Yasmin Khan. I came from the fabric of the universe, and just like her, I am meant to _expand._ How can I do that if I’m trapped away in some stuffy old war?”

“Not givin’ a whit about the rest of us, then?” Yaz says with a wry curl of her lip. The Nightmare Child shrugs. Her legs are still kicking.

“What do you matter? What does anything matter? You’re all so—so _linear.”_ she spits the word in frustration. “Can’t see what’s in front of you, can barely see what’s behind. And front, back—it’s all useless words, isn’t it? That’s not even the way anything _works.”_

She huffs again, as if personally offended by the lack of vocabulary available to her. Then she unpries her fingers from the edge of the bench seat, and runs an annoyed hand through her hair. 

“Don’t even know how you do it, with these stupid bodies,” she says, and glances down at herself in disgust. Yaz, watching her, raises an eyebrow.

“Thought you wanted a body for the Doctor?”

The Nightmare Child’s reaction is instantaneous. Her head whips up, her plait swinging, and she stares at Yaz with lips parted in shock.

“I didn’t—I—” she struggles, before her face twists into a scowl. She draws her hands across her chest, the picture of petulance. 

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” she mumbles. “Not like the Doctor cares.”

It’s so small Yaz nearly can’t make it out. She leans in close, catches the word Doctor, and before she knows it, a smile spreads across her face. 

“Thought I was the only one with a crush,” she taunts, and watches the Nightmare Child turn red. With anger or embarrassment, it’s hard to tell.

“I’m not—” she groans, then turns abruptly, one finger flying up to jab into Yaz’s chest. “What do you know, anyway? You barely know her! She doesn’t even know you! I’ve been there since you met, and she saw me, and she—”

“Apologized.” Yaz is leaning back slightly under the intensity of the Nightmare Child’s gaze. Her eyes are on the finger to her chest, but they’re filled with something dangerously close to sympathy. She looks up, and it’s plain on her face. “She did, didn’t she? We both know that wasn’t to me.”

The Nightmare Child gapes at her. Slowly, the finger sags. Then she jerks it back, and her expression turns sullen.

“S’not like you care, do you?” she spits. Her arms are crossed again, and she stares at the stars in front of them. “She always saw you, didn’t she? From the moment she found you, she didn’t let you go, and the moment she saw me, she—she—”

“Tried to kill you.” Yaz has turned to the stars as well, the swirling nebulas and twinkling, far-off dots painting the sky. “You know, that was me too. Think you keep forgettin’.”

“So?” the Nightmare Child says. “She only did it to get to me. She only wants me dead, or locked away. She doesn’t even _care.”_

“Yeah, well—” Yaz sighs, and slumps against the backseat of the bench. She starts to kick her legs, languidly, then glances at the Nightmare Child and stops. “She was never looking at me either. The whole time, she just wanted to know what was wrong with me, why I was like _that,_ and she barely even liked me. Not as a friend, or—or anything.”

“She liked you more than me,” the Nightmare Child whispers. Her chin is slightly tilted back, and her eyes, glittering black, trace the sky. “Because you’re human, and pretty, and I’m just a _monster.”_

Her voice tilts on the last word, then drops in a harsh huff. She doesn’t move her head, but blinks several times, then swallows once. There’s a quiet sniffle, barely audible.

“I thought if I took this body,” she whispers. Yaz glances at her, but doesn’t say anything. 

“I thought if I took this body, she would realize. Once she figured out the game, she would see it _all._ All the ways she messed up, and how _mean_ she was to me, and she would—I dunno.” her head drops, and she looks to her feet, swings them once, idly. “That she would apologize, I guess.”

This time, Yaz looks over to her, fully.

“She did, though,” she says. “Just now, didn’t she? I heard it.”

The Nightmare Child shrinks under her discerning tone, then gives a half-hearted shrug.

“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbles to the ground. “Still hurts. I thought it would stop hurting.”

Yaz shakes her head. “Doesn’t work like that. I mean, sometimes it does, but I don’t think she can fix us both, yeah? And I think she’s still a little scared of you.”

She says it bluntly, and the Nightmare Child’s lips curl down, hurt flashing across her expression. Yaz watches her for a few moments, then tries to add, “If it helps, I think she’s just not the same way as you are. I mean, she’s more like a human than you, yeah? So she just doesn’t get it.”

She pauses, considers her own words for a moment. “But she tried, and that’s the important part. If you can’t get what you actually want, I mean. It’s still nice that she tried.”

“I guess,” the Nightmare Child says, but she doesn’t sound at all convinced. Yaz watches her for a moment, then brings up her hands to reexamine. They’re completely black by this point, the edges fading as if somebody has begun to take a slow eraser to them. 

“So are you going to let me go?” she asks after several moments pass. The Nightmare Child looks up.

“If I don’t, I get to keep her.”

“Yeah, but she won’t like you.”

The Nightmare Child pauses, mouth open as if to argue. Then she shuts it.

“Why should I let you go?” she asks instead. Yaz shrugs.

“I dunno. The Doctor apologized, didn’t she? And you won’t kill me, then.” she’s still staring at her hands. “I mean, I don’t think the Doctor would like you any better if you killed me.”

The Nightmare Child frowns, considering. Then she sighs, a long exhale of defeat.

“She won’t, won’t she?”

Yaz glances up, then back to her hands. Cautiously, she tucks them under her legs. “Probably not, you ask me. I don’t think you can make her like you, anyway.”

There’s a slightly bitter twist on the word _like,_ a small downward tug of the lips, but then she looks up at the stars, and her face clears into calm trepidation. As if she knows what’s going to happen, but can’t quite get rid of the small wrinkle between her brow.

“Yeah,” the Nightmare Child agrees. Her voice is small, surrendering. “I guess I knew that.”

Yaz looks to her at these words, curiosity sitting uncertain on her face. “So...what are you gonna do?”

The Nightmare Child shrugs, and studies the stars. After a moment she says, “You have a beautiful mind, Yasmin Khan.”

“Uh, thanks.” Yaz stares. The Nightmare Child doesn’t look at her, doesn’t speak for another long second.

Then, finally, “Do you think she’ll forgive me if I let you go? I mean, that she won’t be mad at me anymore?”

There’s an audible hitch in Yaz’s breath. “I—I think it’s worth a shot.”

“Okay.” The Nightmare Child is still looking up to the stars, glinting softly against a dark, swirling sea. “I guess I’ll do that, then.”

“Really?” Yaz asks, then swallows, loud in the quiet. “I—how do you do that? What do I do?”

“Yasmin Khan.” the Nightmare Child looks over to her and gives a smile, soft and sad and entirely grown-up. “You just have to wake up.”

Yaz blinks, and—


End file.
